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Part of my personal mythology involves identifying myself as a wolf therian–basically, I believe that on some nonphysical level of myself, I am more wolf than human. This is something that goes wayyyyyy back to a very young age; therianthropy is just the general framework that I’ve been using to explore and explain it in the past several years. I’ve been evolving into more a personal mythology framework the past couple of years–but not completely disavowing “therianthropy” as a concept. I’m currently explaining it (in my case) as a part of the metaphorical story (that is also true–more on that in a minute) I tell about myself, rather than trying to take the (relatively) literalist perspective of “There’s something wrong with my neurobiology, and that of every other therian, that causes a fundamental miswiring related to identity/senses/etc.”, or the other popular opinion, “I was a wolf in a past life/my soul is that of a wolf”.
Let me make something very clear: I believe that metaphor and mythology are not “just made up”. They come from a complex interplay of the mind and the environment, to include what I believe to be autonomous beings. The modern Western conception of myth/metaphor is that it’s “all in the head’, with no bearing on the real world. I believe these are as much a part of the fabric of reality as physics, and other more materialistic things. I choose to believe that metaphor/myth have autonomous existences independent of the human mind, but that there is interdependence as well. This is a case of both/and instead of either/or. I make this choice A) because I have experienced things that prove to me as an individual that this is true in my subjective reality, and B) because my spiritual path functions much better when I believe this is true.
So. Back to the topic at hand.
As I said, myself-as-wolf is a significant part of my personal mythology. It explains to me a number of traits that “human” doesn’t quite fit–or, at least, that “wolf” fits better. Taylor brought up to me a few weeks ago the concept of myself-as-dog, however. I have a lot more experience working with dogs than I do with wolves, and being a somewhat domesticated critter myself, “dog” may be something to explore in more depth.
What is a dog? One way of looking at it is essentially a domesticated wolf. That’s a very simplistic explanation, but it’s a starting point. A dog is what happens when wolves interact over a long period of time with humans, becoming interdependent. If I am a wolf in human form, interacting within a human paradigm for a lifetime, wouldn’t that create some kind of change in the self-as-wolf? After all, I can’t say that I am only wolf, and while I can guess at how close I am to the experience of being wolf, it’s all conjecture in the end. No on can prove that my experiences when I am in a more wolfish mindset are anything more than my mind’s approximation of what I might assume to be “wolf” things.
Dogs, though, are more of a known quantity. Again, I can’t get inside the head of a dog, but I can observe doggish behavior more often and have a better idea of what a dog is. And from a purely analytical viewpoint, I can compare the outsider’s perspective on wolves and dogs to see where the similarities and differences are.
So working with Dog energy may be an interesting way to get a better handle on myself-as-wolf, filtered through myself-as-human. It’s not a complete parallel, since that part of myself still identifies as wolf rather than dog. However, dogs are the closest things to wolves I have access to on a regular basis. It can’t hurt to at least explore the connections.
Totemically, I may also try working with the totems of different breeds of domestic dog. I’ve always had a particular fondness for more primitive, wolfish breeds–I had German shepherds growing up, and also like malemutes, huskies, and other such breeds. I’m still undecided about what I think about wolf hybrids; I haven’t had much experience with them, and I’ve heard lots of both good and bad testimonies to their temperaments and safety. Still, I’d much rather be around a German shepherd than a Bichon Frise.
I don’t think that I’ll ever give up embracing “wolf” as the primary theme in my life, though the work with “dog” may bring some interesting perspectives. “Wolf” is too deeply ingrained in my fundamental self, and there are certain things that I know will always fit “wolf” better than “dog”. However, I’ve also been embracing the concept of feralness again, the idea of a once-wild being (or lineage of beings) that has been brought into captivity, and then released to the wild again. Your average dog is not feral, but has the capacity to be. It may be that I can find some parallel patterns in my own life as I find once again the part of myself that was born wild, was made captive, and is only now finding itself free again. Given that this part of me is very closely tied to myself-as-wolf, this work with wolf and dog and related concepts may be valuable indeed.
Tonight I tried my first journey with a purpose beyond exploration. I had a favor to ask of Badger, and so I went to see hir. I had an offering in mind, something I could give hir now, and something later, if s/he would help me.
I asked Small Horse and Small Deer (the drum and beater) for their aid, warmed up the drum, then I played Small Badger’s song to ask him to help me to negotiate with Badger. He was quite pleased that I played the song for him and asked him for his help, though I may make it a habit to make a small offering besides that for the skin spirits and other helpers.
So we all went to go see Badger. I drummed for a bit to let Small Horse and Small Deer take me to the starting point. When I arrived, I sang Badger’s song as loudly as I could, just to let hir know I was there. In retrospect, I could have gone looking for hir, too, but s/he didn’t seem miffed about coming to me instead. This is probably at least in part because s/he was expecting me; we’ve already talked a bit about the situation, and this time I came armed with offerings.
Badger made hirself look very large and impressive, and s/he towered over me, even for being a normally close to the Earth animal. I was sufficiently awed, and s/he and I got down to business. I told hir what I wanted hir help with, and also what offerings I would make. S/he was surprised, though not unpleasantly so, that I was offering something now and something later. S/he knew how important this situation is, and also that it would take some time to complete. So s/he accepted, and I was happy. I sang Badger’s song for hir again, to boast about how wonderful s/he is, which tickled hir even more.
Then I came back, and sang songs for Small Badger and Small Deer, and played Small Horse’s drumbeat, though I don’t have a song for hir yet. I warmed the drum down, and set out to start making things happen on my end.
I am quite pleased to note that my ritual structure is coming together nicely. When I started all this stuff out last year, I was doing things in a much more generically neopagan manner. I did a circle casting with an athame still, and swept the place with a broom beforehand for purification. I won’t say that my ritual structure now is the exact same as such-and-such culture’s shamans do it, because it isn’t. However, the structure has changed quite a bit.
Part of this is due to my beliefs. I no longer feel that I need to create a “world between worlds” to practice in, and I see all space as sacred, even if the Land in one place is tougher for me to connect with than in another place. While I greet the totems at the directions, I don’t do this as part of circumscribing a circle to divide me from the rest of the world. I don’t see myself as calling them, either–they’re already there; I need only remember that.
As I’m also focusing more on journeying, the ritual structure has evolved to support that as a central practice in many of the rituals, preparing me to go in, and helping me to come back out, as well as interact with the spirits at all points throughout. And the drumming has become much more prevalent, essentially having replaced the athame in greeting the directional totems and others.
Obviously, there are things that are in common between the previous structure and what I use now. But these are the most significant changes I’ve ever made, taking whole sections and tools and things out, and adding others in because they work better. It’s made things a lot more effective, even in this relatively short period of time.
So we’ll see how things progress, and what Badger ends up bringing about. While at an earlier point in my life, particularly when I was heavily into Chaos magic, I was very focused on the end results of my magic to determine my success. While that’s still important, what constitutes a good result may vary more than “I asked for X and got X”. It may be something as simple as “I asked for X, but Badger decided that Y would actually be better–and s/he was right”. Or it may end up being something much more complex, something that can’t be quantified in a linear, cause and effect fashion. “Success” is a very subjective notion, and a ritual that didn’t result in the intended way may still end up being more success than failure.
Not that I’d mind getting what I asked for, of course 
I updated the therioshamanism FAQ, since it hadn’t been done since last April, and a lot has changed since then.
It amazes me just how quickly things are changing. I’m used to things developing with some advancing through leaps and bounds, sudden shifts upward that carry me along. However, in the past year, and especially the past half year, the process has been accelerated. A lot of this, I think, is because I’m applying myself more than I ever have before I started this whole therioshamanism thing. I’ve been doing a lot, including things I don’t blog about but that are important anyway. It’s become a day-to-day practice, even if every day doesn’t always include journeying or rituals. It’s been a very intense time.
It almost feels, in a way, like I’ve reached a new level of actualizing, of tapping into potential I hadn’t been in contact with before. I knew that formalizing my spiritual path would create some changes for the better, but I wasn’t expecting the kind of experiential growth I’ve been through. I’ve made progress in the past, but there’s more fluidity, continuity, and meaning in it this time through.
Take the teaching aspect, for example–the fact that I’ll be teaching therioshamanism to others is part of what prompted me to change the FAQ, since a lot of it was based from a solitary perspective. I’ve taught via workshops and books for several years now, and I think I’ve done pretty well with it. However, when I started all this I hadn’t intended it as anything except a path for myself.
Back in November was when the spirits first started urging me to pass what I’ve been learning on to others. At the time, I told them I wanted my six months’ initial training to be done before I even considered it seriously. Even then, it took another six months after that.
I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I didn’t feel comfortable where I am now. Anyway, I won’t be teaching everything there is to teach. Instead, I’ll be guiding students through the six months’ training, which is really the only structured part of this whole path. And that’s mainly to give them the context and parameters that I’ve developed for therioshamanism. After that initial training is done, we’ll all practice as individuals, and come together once a month to trade notes and troubleshoot. There won’t be any degree system, and rites of passage will be organic and personal. I want to maintain enough control to be able to decide what therioshamanism is and isn’t, but I want those I teach to feel comfortable with experimenting within those parameters.
I feel like the personal part of my practice is accelerating as well. I can’t get into details right now, but I am very quickly coming to better understand and develop a formal ritual structure that will facilitate journeying and other practices. The spirits and I have been bouncing a lot of information and ideas off each other, thoughts and aesthetics and considerations. Things that have been vague forms in my head for literally years are coming into sudden, sharp focus. I think the roots of therioshamanism go deeper than I thought, and I only recently became conscious of what was growing there.
Things are coming together nicely, and I’ll be curious to see where I am next September.
Because I’m going to start doing more formal shamanic work, it became time to get a new drum. I’m still keeping the small goatskin drum I made for my Earth month a while back for practice purposes and backup as necessary (plus it’s quieter, good for apartment living). But I’d been told a while back that once I was ready to start practicing seriously, that I’d need to get a new drum for that. The timing was good–this is my last splurge for awhile, since I’m now a full-time student as of this week.
I chose to go to Cedar Mountain Drums, which is in my neighborhood. I’ve been there a few times, including when I got the kit to make my first drum. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a drumming circle they held there and had a chance to play a number of drums. I hadn’t been sure what sort of drum I was going to get, so this was a good opportunity to try out different sounds and creations. The one that I kept gravitating towards was a large horsehide drum on a cedar frame; the sound was lovely, other than a tiny, barely perceptible vibration at the end of the note.
So when I went today to get my own drum, I headed towards the 17″ unbleached horsehide on cedar frames. I was fortunate in that the owner of the shop had just made a few yesterday, and though they were just a wee bit damp still, they had a very lovely sound. It took me a bit, but I settled on one that had not only a nice voice, but also a good energy to it as well. I picked out a beater as well, and was ready to go. I paid, brought the drum home, and it’s now sitting up in the ritual area along with the smaller drum:
I won’t be playing the new drum yet, not until the Equinox when I’ll be doing a private anniversary ceremony, since it’ll have been a year since I first started on this path.
I do highly recommend Cedar Mountain Drums if you’re in the market for a drum; the owner has 17 years experience in drum making, and runs a very good business.
It is appropriate that the drum ended up being horsehide. I’m finding myself reclaiming some things from when I was younger, things that I had rejected or gotten burned out on. One of these is my relationship with Horse. Horse was the second totem to come into my life, after Wolf. When I was a preteen, not long after I turned twelve, Horse came in to the point that s/he temporarily replaced Wolf for a few years, staying with me until near the end of my senior year of high school.
This was an incredibly awkward time of my life. I was not the most socially adjusted teen in the world, and ended up being picked on more than just about anyone in the school. It wasn’t any one thing; I simply didn’t fit in. Most girls my age had been interested in boys and clothes and makeup for a few years. I was more interested in grubbing around in the woods, reading books about animals, and collecting Breyer Horses. Being in a small town with a small student population that was particularly prone to cliquishness, I didn’t have much in the way of friends. So I ended up spending a lot of time alone.
There were various attempts, over the years, to try to get me to conform in one way or another–a new haircut, an attempt to show me how to use makeup, an inquiry as to whether I should maybe try to make friends with such-and-such clique (who had never shown anything but contempt for me). None of it worked. I tried a few times to be like other people and blend in–and the results were usually disastrous. I simply didn’t get it, and wasn’t interested enough to try any harder.
What Horse did was support my independence, and show me that I didn’t need to conform. Unfortunately, I ended up blaming Horse in part for what I perceived as too much sheltering and the continued proliferation of my social awkwardness–instead of taking responsibility for my actions, as well as understanding that I wasn’t responsible for the emotionally abusive words and actions of my peers. So I ended up pushing Horse away once Wolf came back late in high school. For years I denied any connection with Horse whatsoever.
What was I so afraid of? Honestly, I think I worried that I would lose what independence I did have, and get sucked into some life that I didn’t want to be a part of. I wasn’t secure in myself at all, even into my twenties, and it took moving out on my own, along with some hard life lessons, to really begin to formulate a solid sense of self. Sadly, some of that was so wrapped up in being a Wolf person that I ignored most other totems, and deliberately avoided Horse.
Now, as I’m approaching thirty and looking back at the last decade, I’m beginning to reclaim some of the things I let go of which in retrospect were things I really do value. I don’t blame myself or castigate myself for my previous actions; in a way, these things had to happen for me to learn. But now I can look at them with more confidence, and not be afraid. I can still make boundaries with the things that I know even more don’t suit me, but still accept that other things are alright.
This includes Horse. I feel very honored that s/he has chosen to come back into my life. I’m hoping we can talk more about my experiences as a teenager and how they shaped who I am today. And I’m looking forward to Small Horse’s guidance as my drum.
Plus I’ll see what Horse has to say about the future, not just the past. I’m aware, for example, that the hide that is on my drum almost certainly came from a horse that died in a slaughterhouse. This is a charged issue; on the one hand, it’s been considered a victory that horses are no longer able to be legally slaughtered in the United States. However, this has led to an unexpected side effect–horses are now being shipped further away into even less humane facilities in Mexico. I wonder what Horse and Small Horse will have to say about this issue.
I am grateful for the return of Horse. May our relationship be renewed, and be healthier than ever.
I’ve taken a break the past week from drumming and other shamanic practice, as a number of other things have hit me from a variety of directions. On one hand, the Animal Father has been persistently reminding me of my responsibilities, particularly my primary project right now with the drumming and dancing. However, Bear has been countering some of his demands, reminding him (and me) that I need to rest sometimes, and that it’s okay to take a break now and then. Bear has always been supportive of me taking care of my health, and not just physically. This isn’t surprising, as I’ve always associated hir with healing. However, s/he’s really stepped up as I’ve been on this path, which is more demanding than what I did in the past, to remind me of balance and burnout.
I was thinking the other night–what if Bear, and the Animal Father, and all the other spirits I work with, are just aspects of my psyche, figments of my imagination? What if there’s no objective reality in what I’m doing? And I thought about it for a while, and realized that even if that were the case, I’m still happy that the Animal Father and Bear are talking to each other. While I don’t believe, personally, that they’re all in my head, I do see their influences in my life, and the corresponding behavior patterns I have. I do tend to push myself pretty hard sometimes, and I need to remember that I don’t always have to stuff as much activity and achievement into one day that I possibly can. (Not surprisingly, one of the biggest advocates of me remembering this has been my husband, Taylor, who incidentally is one of Bear’s own.)
Back when I was more heavily practicing Chaos magic, I spent some time stuck pretty firmly in the psychological model of magic, the idea that it’s all a part of our minds, complex as they may be. I eventually gave up on that model, and also distanced myself from Chaos magic somewhat, because for me personally I found it to be an ultimately empty and disheartening perspective. While I value psychology quite a bit (as my current studies and entrance into graduate school should indicate), I see it as just one layer of reality. I see reality as being multilayered, and the layers are more a convenient form of description than a concrete structure–they aren’t exclusive of each other. So I can look at something from a psychological perspective, and then examine the same thing as an animist, and then combine the two together for a third viewpoint. And I don’t believe that the psychological perspective is superior to the animistic one, or vice versa. Each perspective is a set of tools and pictures that allows me to better understand whatever I encounter, and the more perspectives I have access to, the more thorough my understanding. This is why I draw from multiple wells–psychology, neuroscience, animism, both traditional and neo shamanisms, basic quantum physics, and so forth.
However, it is not my knowing these things that is important alone. Instead, what also must be taken into consideration is how I utilize them–and that’s something that doesn’t necessarily come out of a book. I can theorize all I want, but unless I actually use what I have learned, all it is is a bunch of words. It’s taken me a while to loosen my grip somewhat on my enamorment of academic understanding; I haven’t let go entirely, and I still find value in it, but I don’t place it on the high pedestal I once did.
And I look at my situation, and I consider what’s more valuable. Is it more important that I should scrape together whatever mythological, psychological, and historical evidence to support the eclectic, syncretic path that I am composing as I go along? Or should I value the experience and the lessons learned more than that? While I don’t believe that we should ignore the experiences of others as they’ve been recorded over time, I do think that subjective, personal experience has an edge in one’s personal practice. Even if it isn’t corroborated by any known, previously existing religious path, if it’s leading the person who follows it to become a better person and/or make the world a better place, then I don’t think that its novelty should be too weighted against it.
To be sure, I don’t support the deliberate misrepresentation of one’s path. However, I think sometimes people try to separate out the historical/factual/etc. correctness of a path while failing to consider the experiential value of it. And you can’t separate the experience from the facts when judging the path as a whole.
So I accept the distinct possibility that there’s no way to prove that what I’m doing is anything beyond my subjective perceptions, and that the connections to other shamanisms are ultimately tenuous at best. However, that possibility is only part of the story, and it surely isn’t enough to discourage me from having experiences that I find to be not only personally beneficial, but which encourage me to be more aware of the world around me and what I can do to improve it.
The Song and Dance Project (as I shall irreverently call it) has been continuing apace. Working with Deer and Small Deer has, in some ways, been a sigh of relief after Badger and Small Badger’s rather complex songs. The Deer songs have been very simple, lyrically speaking, and in fact the vocals are less of a focus than the drumming. Deer’s sing is so vocally simple, in fact, that its lyrics consist of a single word.
Lately, every time I’ve gone up to drum, I’ve run through all the songs I’ve written so far, usually three times for each, before starting on a new one. I’m doing my best to commit these all to memory. However, there will be a few dozen songs just from the totems and skin spirits–and there’s no telling who’ll want a song after them. I do want to sit down at some point with an audio recording program and a good mike and do basic recordings of each song, just so I have them on hand. Even after I finish writing all the totem and skin spirit songs I’ll still be practicing them regularly, in addition to whatever actual ritual use they get. But as my memory is still a bit impaired from years of sleep deprivation, a little technological backup can’t hurt, so long as I don’t let it replace regular practice.
That’s pretty much been my main focus as of late with my practice. This is perfectly fine with me; the first six months were pretty intense, and after that things were a little up in the air. It’s nice to have something resembling a linear set of tasks for a little while, though–it helps to keep me focused. It’s also helping me build a solid foundation for when things refuse to even resemble “linear”.
In other news, life has taken an interesting twist. Dissatisfied with making my living in the field of technical writing and editing, which mainly benefits large corporations and does little to help make the world a better place, a while ago I began seriously questioning what I wanted to do with my life. In reviewing what really interested me, I found myself continually coming back to psychology. While I didn’t have a formal background in it other than a couple of courses in my undergraduate work in college, in my own readings in the years since I graduated I found that psychology was something I kept coming back to. Ecopsychology was a particular interest, not surprisingly.
An added perk was the fact that psychology could easily be applied to real-world efforts to help people–and healthy individuals contribute to healthier communities. So I did some research on local universities and found one that, while it didn’t have a full degree in ecopsychology, the community counseling program did have an ecopsychology track as one possible emphasis.
After going to an open house for the graduate department in May, and finding out there were still openings for the Autumn semester, I rushed around to get everything pulled together in the space of a month to apply. I had never taken my GREs, so I got them scheduled and taken; I also rounded up reference letters, and ordered a transcript from my undergrad university. I got everything in just under the wire.
And…..I got accepted! I’ll be starting in September. If all goes well, in a few years I’ll have a Master’s degree in community counseling, and after 2400 hours of monitored practice I’ll have my license as well.
This bodes well. While psychology doesn’t automatically equal shamanism, and vice versa, counseling is a profession that, besides being something I can see myself committing my life to, I perceive as being quite complementary to my shamanic practice. While I’d most likely keep them as relatively separate parts of my life (i.e., I wouldn’t advertise a private counseling practice as being “genuine modern shamanism!”), I can still see the experiences from one meshing well with the other.
The spirits I work with are pleased about this (just so long as I don’t get so overwhelmed by school that I neglect them, of course). So I’ll take it as a good sign.
I’ve been rather quiet lately, haven’t I? Here’s a bit of what’s been going on:
–I’ve been continuing with creating songs for the skin spirits and totems I work with. Small Badger and Badger now each have their own songs; Badger’s was particularly difficult, and s/he wouldn’t let me move on to the next until I had it just right. Took me longer than the others, but I got it. I’m now working on Small Deer’s drum beat; I haven’t yet created a song for it.
–Taylor and I went hiking on Mt. Hood last weekend. It still wants some proof of commitment beyond the average hiker, but is quite patient and willing to wait. Mt. Hood doesn’t seem to be as prone to quick attachment as Multnomah-Wahkeena was. But we now have a parking pass from the forest service and can park anywhere on the lots around the mountain at the trailheads.
–I’ve been chewing on the whole issue of Death as of late. Along with still having my own hang-ups and issues regarding Death, I also have the interplay between me and the skin spirits, which often experienced their own bad deaths. So a lot of their energy and their communication with me has been triggering my issues, and forcing me to start dealing with them more. This isn’t a terrible thing, of course. Better to deal with them now than if I were called upon for whatever reason to act the role of psychopomp in an intense journey setting. I have received the useful advice that I should probably try focusing more on life-affirming things as balance, such as my gardening and hiking and volunteering and whatnot. The skins spirits for my artwork have been particularly insistent about my attention lately, and I need to make sure to not let their needs overwhelm me.
–Tonight I took a little time out to create a community on Livejournal that I’ve been meaning to for a while, Totemists. A totemist is a person for whom totemism (usually, though not always, from a neopagan/neoshamanic perspective) is more than just “I know my totem, and occasionally ask for protection”. Rather, totemism is a significant part of the person’s spiritual/magical practice. The community is specifically NOT for questions like “What’s my totem? What does this totem mean?” and other 101 level material. I’m hoping for some good conversations.
I am absolutely amazed at myself for sticking with this for more than a couple of months. Coming up in September it’ll have been a year since I started a specifically shamanic path. Less than three months–pretty amazing to me. Of course, I’m settling down in other ways, so that’s not all that surprising. I’ve learned a hell of a lot, and I feel a lot more connected to the Land, the various spirits I’ve been building relationships with, other people, etc. I feel like a small seed slowly putting out roots and shoots to fill a particular niche I’ve landed in.
So that’s pretty much it–mostly, at this point, my practice is revolving around the drumming and singing, the upcoming totemic drum and dance ritual I’m hosting here in Portland, and continuing to interact with the Land and its denizens on a daily basis. Is there anything else anyone might be curious about hearing more about?
One minor detail I forgot to add in the last post–I mentioned a fear of public singing. This was somewhat relieved as after I put Small Wolf on and before we began to dance, I sang the songs for both Wolf and Small Wolf. I’ve never sung them for anyone else; my husband can hear me upstairs, and as mentioned a couple people overheard me when I was singing and drumming Saturday afternoon. But this was the first time people were actually paying attention for the full thing.
I managed to get through without flubbing up any of the words–all that practice was good for that! Wolf and Small Wolf both seemed happy with the songs and my choice of timing. And, on a personal note, I was surprised that my voice came out as well as it did; I’ve never considered myself that great a singer (except as harmonic accompaniment). I also have a screwed up respiratory system thanks to a bad case of bronchitis in high school and numerous upper respiratory infections throughout my life, so my throat’s taken a bit of a beating. But I gotta say, I never sang so well as I did last night, and I’ve never been braver. Normally I screw something up, but this time, it went off without a hitch.
It’s a good sign.
So this weekend marked a pretty significant shift for me (no pun intended). I went to Sunfest on the coast with my husband, Taylor. It was an excellent festival, and I highly recommend it to anyone in the Pacific Northwest. Anyway, it’s one of the few places in the Northwest that I’ve found where I can do fire dancing, which means it’s also one of the few places where I can do wolf dancing.
I’ve been dancing with Small Wolf, my wolf skin, since 2002. Folks who went to Sirius Rising from 2002 through 2006 may remember me as “the skinny chick in the wolf skin”. Since moving to the Northwest, I’ve spent more time getting settled in than getting out and about; I didn’t really do much while in Seattle, and now that we’ve been in Portland a year we’ve been working on finding more stuff in the area. I haven’t heard much about drum circles in Portland proper (gas prices prohibit regular attendance anywhere else, though occasional visits aren’t out of the question). So if any of my readers know of any options, feel free to let me know.
At any rate, I’ve been dancing with Small Wolf, the whole time. It’s generally been for the fun of it, both for Small Wolf and for me. I like getting a chance to see the world through his eyes, and he enjoys being able to move again, borrowing my body as I wear his skin. However, since starting on this shamanic path, the dancing has been moving towards something deeper and more complex than that. A lot of the threads of my practice over the years are beginning to come together into something more cohesive–which is exactly what I’ve been working towards in this endeavor.
This weekend, I had an experience that brought a lot of this purpose into sharp focus. I had brought Small Wolf with me expecting to get some dancing in, since Sunfest has a good group of drummers and a fire pit. I also brought my drum, since it wanted to come along as well. Saturday afternoon I had some time to sit and drum, practicing my songs for both Wolf and Small Wolf. I had a couple of folks come and share the drumming with me, which was nice. While most of my songs right now are still private, Small Wolf has always been a very public critter, and enjoys sharing with others (to an extent–not just anyone is allowed to touch him, and never without my permission unless you want to get yelled at). This was a good exercise for me, too, because while I’m fine with public speaking, I’m nervous about public singing. I’m not looking at huge concert tours and things of that nature, thankfully, but I will eventually need to at least be able to do the songs and drumming and such in front of other people as I take what I’m learning and use it to help others.
Last night it began to rain. Well, not really rain, so much as drizzle and spit. However, I generally don’t wolf dance outdoors in the rain because it’s really bad for Small Wolf–tanned furs are nowhere near as waterproof as the live deal. It’s tough to dry out the skin while camping, too, especially in a damp area. So I had originally figured I probably wasn’t going to get to dance. I had danced Friday night, and there were a number of people who had missed out on it. Apparently last year Small Wolf and I made quite an impression at our first Sunfest, and there were folks who were really looking forward to seeing us dance again (or who had heard about it but not seen it).
Our tent ended up being leaky, Taylor was recovering from a twenty-four hour bug, and I was wiped out from a busy weekend of vending, dancing, and socializing. So we decided to head home last night. This was perfect, because it meant that I could get a dance in before we left, and since home was only a couple of hours away I could get Small Wolf dried out since it was still only drizzling, not pouring. I made arrangements to get the folks who wanted to see the wolf dancing at the fire at an appointed time, asked a few of the drummers if they would be willing to show up, and managed to pull everything together in a short time.
The time came, and people were there at the circle, a couple dozen including the drummers. I had just intended to dance and be done with it. However, both Wolf and Small wolf had something else in mind. As I stepped into the circle, they made it very clear they wanted it to be a ritual. Small Wolf and I already have a bit of a rite we go through when we first get to the fire. First I walk around the fire a few times, greet it, and exchange energy with it to connect with it. Then as I prepare myself for the rite, I continue circling. After that I will carry Small Wolf over my shoulder and hold his head towards the fire so he may greet it. After that I put him on, binding his legs to my arms and legs, and tying his head over mine like a hood. I may then sit on the ground for a few moments, getting a really strong connection with him, and then we dance.
However, this time, after I connected with the fire and before I connected with Small Wolf, I called on the totems of the directions as well as various entities of Nature I work with, including the Animal Father. I don’t consider it evoking them, since they’re already there–the Green Mother is in the plant life, the Animal Father in critters great and small, the Wind and Water in the storm, etc. I don’t see a need to banish them, either, at the end–where would they go? I do acknowledge their presence, though, and ask them to witness the ritual if they will.
Only then did I ask Small Wolf to dance with me. I don’t just assume; I always ask. He’s generally enthusiastic–he enjoys it at least as much as I do. So I draped him over me, and we began to dance as the drummers drummed–they were so wonderful, those drummers! And the people watching were incredibly respectful and focused, sharing in the experience. A few had rattles and bells that they played with the drummers, and others I could see the wolf energy touch them. Small Wolf and I danced, and we danced, and the energy rose, and I began to show my teeth in the happy wolf-grin….
And then at the height of it, we invited those who would to come join us, to dance with us, to share in the wolf energy. Only a few did, but they settled into the current so easily, so smoothly. We’ve been able to share that current at more informal drum circles, and had people follow us in a line as we danced around the fire, but this was the first time that this was the sole focus of the dancing and drumming, and being able to feel that without distractions really showed me just what it was that Small Wolf and I have been building together for over half a decade.
I wish I hadn’t been so worn out; while I can channel energy with the best of them, I do allow my body to remind me of its limits. It had been a busy weekend, I’d done most of the setup when we arrived on site because Taylor was still sick, and I was potentially fighting off the bug as well. Plus cold rain will sap my strength more than just about anything. So I wish I’d had more strength, but when I reached my limit, Wolf backed off, and Small Wolf helped me to wind down. We left the wolf “flavor” in the drum circle–enough to let people keep the spirit of the ritual with them, but nothing that wouldn’t dissipate as the night wore on and other elements and spirits came in to dance with the people. I thanked all the spirits and beings who had witnessed the ritual, though they, like Wolf, had already begun to back off to their usual places as I began to tire. I think I wish I could have held out longer, danced more with the people who had been there; one person earlier in the day had been talking to me about how she and other people often felt intimidated by the fire dancing, too self-conscious to go out there and dance–and that sometimes what was needed was an invitation. I tried that, but I think if I’d had more energy I could have gotten people more involved in the ritual.
But I think we made an impression on the folks who were there, and this was definitely a good start. It gives me more focus of where my work with Wolf and Small Wolf will go. While I don’t tend to believe everything I read in the dictionaries, the theme of Wolf energy as teacher energy makes a lot of sense here. One thing Small Wolf and I have always been able to do with our dancing has been inspire people; Wolf and Small Wolf have been good at teaching me to lead through example. Part of why I blog here is to show other people what I’m doing and to hopefully inspire them to walk their own paths more fully and without fear. There are too many problems in the world these days to waste time letting the naysayers scare you into not doing what you need to do for fear of being told you’re wrong–we need more constructive actions, not destructive ones. (And there are better ways to remind someone of their impact than to insult them and point out only their mistakes.)
So the role I seem to be moving into with Wolf and Small Wolf is that which will be the most public aspects of my practice–giving people something they can participate in not just as spectators, but as active participants in the ritual. Time will tell as to whether any of the other totems or skin spirits want to be that involved with people beyond private ceremonies. However, Wolf and Small Wolf have always been happy to accompany me in public dances at pagan gathers. This is a great opportunity, because just being able to watch seems to really get people thinking about the Wild. If I can take that wonder and joy and roll it over into more interactive rituals that have a theme of Wolf = Wild = Respecting the Wild, so much the better.
It’s also good for me for personal reasons. One thing that can be considered, I suppose, a personality flaw is that I love attention. Okay, I love good attention, not the kind of attention one gets when punched in the nose, let me clarify! While most people like attention, I sometimes go overboard, and it’s something I’ve had to struggle with for years. The shamanic work has been great for teaching me how to shove my ego out of the way when needed. However, the enjoyment of attention is actually coming in handy here, because I’m able to get over my self-consciousness and instead consciously attract attention for a specific purpose. Therefore I’m able to take a personality trait that could potentially be a problem (attention whoring, anyone) and instead channel it into something more positive and constructive. Not that it completely solves all problems; I do still have to remember that when I dance, it’s not all about me. But Small Wolf in particular has been a great teacher for working through that particular bit of conditioning, and instead of completely squelching the desire for
attention, I’ve instead been learning to use it for the Powers of Good (TM)!
It’ll be interesting to see how this Wolf/Small Wolf work progresses. They’ve already been strongly involved in the ecological aspects of my life and practice; it’s no coincidence that wolves have often been equated with the wilderness, and the need to preserve both. Wolf taught me to appreciate Nature from an early age, and Small Wolf has continued with that through our dancing. I’m going to find some ways to maybe do more regular rituals where others can participate, since there are a lot of things Wolf and Small Wolf would like me to pass on to other people, and this is a great way to do so.
Wolf, the teacher and my guide into the Wild, and Small Wolf, my dance partner and willing conspirator in impromptu inspiration, are definitely taking me in some good directions.
ETA: Here’s a brief addendum to this post that I added after the feeds picked up on it.
Recently I had cause to be part of a discussion as to whether anyone else had been feeling currents of change building up towards Something Bigger. I see this a lot in the various spiritual subcultures I’m a part of. Something Bigger is usually seen as a mystical/spiritual trend beyond our ken, sometimes with an apocalyptic bent that grows more common as we approach the legendary 2012. The general pattern is this:
–Something bad or otherwise significant happens to someone; or, someone starts to feel fluctuations in the energy around them.
–The person(s) then goes into hyperawareness mode, looking for any potential explanation for what’s going on beyond mundane explanations.
–This may then spiral into a huge self-reproducing cycle of worry, anxiety, and speculation that defies any more down-to-Earth theories of what happened.
Now, I know damned well that there’s more to reality than just what we can interpret with our (subjective) five physical senses. What I disagree with about the above cycle is that although such occurrences may indeed be linked to Something Bigger, that Something Bigger is often closer to home than we may suspect.
A good example is this past week. Last Tuesday, I took my GREs, having graduated from college seven years ago almost to the day–I did well, but it was a significant event for me, and it wiped me out quite a bit. Since last Thursday, I have developed and been recovering from a bad case of strep throat (I don’t recommend it, by the way). During my recovery, we had a squirrel get caught in our upstairs, and I had to do some fancy maneuvering to get it back outdoors. Needless to say, it’s not been a fun few days, but I managed.
It would be easy for me to blow this whole week out of proportion, given that most of it wasn’t so great. However, I’m really a fan of Occam’s Razor–the simplest answer is the most likely. Not the only answer, but the first one I look to. In the case of my week, there is a very simple set of explanations:
–I have a weak respiratory system to begin with; I was that kid who caught every single cold and other upper respiratory bug that came through (except, amazingly enough, chicken pox, unless I managed to get a “spotless” version thereof). Saturday night my husband and I went out to a club, where you have a whole bunch of people in close quarters, so that’s most likely where I picked it up, though I may even have gotten a quick-incubating version when I took the GREs. Needless to say, respiratory germs love me; I can’t say the feeling is mutual.
–Taking the GREs stressed me out some, and additionally my sleep schedule got a little wonky, which meant there were a couple of nights where I didn’t get as much sleep as I needed. Additionally, I began my period last week, which also can temporarily lower the immune system.
–As for the squirrels, we’ve been dealing with them since last year. It was only a matter of time before they actually got inside.
I did talk to Squirrel, just to be sure. At most, the situation with the squirrel in the attic was a good lesson in observing how I deal with stressful situations, but for the most part, it was just a matter of an urban squirrel finding a cozy spot to live (albeit an inconvenient one). That I managed to learn something from the situation is a good sign, but I can learn from just about any experience–life is a process of learning, something you’ll hear from everyone from shamans to neurobiologists.
I think there’s a lot to be said for one’s perception. Say you have a crappy day, where nothing seems to go right. You may actually have some good things occur, but you’re so focused on the things that have gone wrong that what’s gone right goes unnoticed. In this case, your perceptions may have much more to do with your luck than any outside force.
Do I think there’s Something Bigger? Absolutely. However, I don’t believe it has anything to do with me in specific, any more than anyone else. Too often the kind of cycle I mentioned in the beginning of this post is accompanied by a feeling of “Ooooh, I can sense something, what does it mean for me? What is it about me that makes me able to sense this, while no one else knows what’s going on?” People try to make a bigger deal out of the situation than they really need to.
When I think of Something Bigger, at least in regards to the human species, I think less of apocalyptic myths, and more about the concrete cumulative detrimental effect we’ve had on the environment, on each other, and on ourselves. Perhaps the energy, the soul, of the Earth is changing. Perhaps we are feeling large-scale shifts in what we’re perceiving. However, I figure it’s less about the potential for a whole slew of angels and demons pouring out of a rift in the sky for a huge battle, and more about the building damage we’re inflicting on this world and its inhabitants (ourselves included), physically and energetically.
And if we perceive more unhealthy patterns around us, shouldn’t that tell us to look at our own health? Remember what I said about how having a bad day can contribute to feeling like everything sucks? Given how many people just in the U.S. suffer from a host of bad experiences and resultant conditioning, and how psychologically damaged even healthier people can be, it’s not at all surprising when people project that outward onto the world around them. We aren’t raised to have healthy relationships with ourselves, or with others, or with the environment, and it’s hard to keep ignoring the result of this lack of social health. While some people have done a lot of healing in this regard, it’s tough to find someone who is completely untouched by some trauma or issue.
The obsession with a mystical, out of our hands Something Bigger is simultaneously self-centered and self-denying. It focuses on the perceptions of the self, and the idea that the self may be more special in hir unique perceptions, or even more special by virtue of the Universe caring enough about the individual to enmesh hir (and maybe a few friends) in some vast cosmic plot–or even that the plot has to do with humans in particular. However, it is self-denying in that it neatly removes responsibility for any major changes from the individual. Angry spirits? Explain them away as an impending apocalypse on the spiritual planes rather than pissy land spirits who aren’t happy about the pollution and being ignored by most people, and ba-boom! No more responsibility! Or, alternately, explain it as something that’s absolutely fated and inevitable and there’s not a damned thing we can do to change it–again, we’re left free and clear (relatively speaking).
This is not to say that there’s absolutely no truth or possibility to the idea of an apocalypse. However, when I think of Something Bigger, my first thoughts go to things that directly tie it to the simplest answers. Only after definitively ruling out these possibilities will I look further. The exception may be if I get a direct message from a spirit that gives more complexity, but even then I don’t automatically believe everything I hear, no matter who it is. And I still test what messages I get against Occam’s Razor.
In my experience, when something is decidedly not simple, there’s no doubt about it in my mind. I may have to ask around for specifics, but there’s a certain “feel” to something that’s More, and it’s different than something that’s important to just me, even something so important to me that it feels Earth-shattering. We are capable of feeling very deeply on our own, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is involved. Lose a partner through breakup, divorce or death, and you may feel that your life has no meaning–but the world goes on anyway. There doesn’t have to be any significant impact beyond the people immediately affected by a situation; while our actions have ripples, not every action ripples indefinitely. My getting sick and dealing with a wayward squirrel in the space of twenty-four hours doesn’t have to mean anything more than a few germs and a wild mammal converging on me at the same time.
I do think that the culture I am a part of puts too much emphasis on intellect and ignores a healthy approach to intuition most of the time. However, tossing intellect out the window with the bathwater is not the solution to salvaging intuition’s damaged reputation. You are not more spiritual the more wacky your stories get; healthy spirituality is that which can still interface with the rest of reality, rather than running at odds with “mundane” reality. Something Bigger does not have to be about the improbable–look to the very possible first, and then work your way out from there (if it’s even necessary). Even if Something Bigger ends up being more than meets the eye, at least you’ve made yourself aware of the more immediate issues and can work on them as well as the weirder ones.
I originally wrote this up on Monday, but wanted to take a little more time to chew on what I was saying. So here, slightly belated, is my post.
Over at the Wild Hunt blog, Jason Pitzl-Waters has been taking a much-deserved vacation. In his place he’s invited a group of other pagan bloggers to guest blog. Monday’s guest blog is by Cat Chapin-Bishop of Quaker Pagan Reflections. She brought up a good point:
So why is nearly everything we write in the form of a recipe book? Why so little in the way of lived experience? For a religion of direct, personal gnosis, we have remarkably little writing about what happens when we set out to practice rather than preach.
Now, let me say this first and foremost. Every person has hir own comfort zone when it comes to talking about spiritual experiences. Even I have things that I won’t talk about publicly, or even to anyone save my husband (and even then there are still things that are for my ears only). So I’m not going to say “YOU MUST ALL TELL EVERYTHING!!!!”
However, I think Ms. Chapin-Bishop makes a really good point in regards to what’s actually been written down, whether in print or online, regarding neopagan and related practices. There’s a lot of protocol, and formality, and “Do this this way because that’s the way it’s supposed to be done”, and there are also scads of pre-crafted spells and rituals. Granted, there are also personal accounts, but they’re not as common. The books and sites I like the most are the ones that have a good balance of theory and practice–they explain the theory in good detail, but then use personal anecdotes to further illustrate the points made, and follow up with exercises (not precrafted spells and rituals) to help the readers put the ideas into action for themselves.
I don’t talk a lot about myself-as-author or myself-as-editor here. I save that mostly for my Livejournal, which is more of a catch-all blog where I share links, keep in touch with people I know scattered around the world, and do the bulk of my promotional stuff. This blog here, on the other hand, is more focused, and with rare exception is meant for recording and sharing what of my shamanic work I’m willing to let others read about.
However, one thing I particularly look for as an editor (and as a reader) is people showing their work. Part of that is on the theoretical end, citing sources, etc. However, I want to see practical work. I want to see anecdotes that show that the writer actually did what they talk about. I want to get some idea of what I may be getting myself into. And as an author, that’s something I try to convey in my own writings. Some of what I write is pure theory, and that’s fine. But that’s also why I tell the stories of what’s happened to me here.
Would this blog be as interesting if I didn’t share the stories of myself? If I just rambled on and on about shamanism as a theoretical practice, but without ever sharing anecdotes, either my own or others’? Would you have as good a sense of what’s going on in my corner of the woods? Probably not. I know that for some of you being able to read them has helped you, either by showing you that you aren’t the only one having such experiences, or by inspiring you to do more with your own path. And I know that that’s been true for when I’ve read the works of others, including folks who have commented here.
So while I’ll continue to keep some things to myself, things that are just between the spirits and me, I’ll continue to share the stories I’m willing to tell.
On a little different note, one line in particular from the essay really struck home for me:
Tell me about how hot your sweat lodge was and how thirsty you emerged from it, when you explore whether or not Pagan sweat lodges are cultural appropriation.
I’ve changed a good bit in my perspectives on cultural appropriation, especially since accepting the call to shamanism. When I first started thinking about it, I was more of a hardass than I am now. Not to the extent where I called all white shamans “wannabes”, but I tended to put a lot more emphasis on “doing it right”. My ultimate decision at the time was still “You need to make your own educated choices”, but there was still more judgement on my part than probably was healthy.
I can look at this article from two years ago and see where I was beginning to question the more hardline opinions I had. However, starting shamanic work last September contributed to a further chipping away of my stubbornness that anyone who did X was obviously Y. What really clinched the deal was my experience in Arizona, where going through two of the ecoshamanic initiations with James Endredy, as well as my own personal rite of passage on my “day off”, demonstrated just how overcerebral I was being about the whole situation. I was so concerned about doing it “by the books” and trying so hard not to offend people who might *gasp* assume I was a plastic shaman that I wasn’t really letting myself sink into the experience itself.
And that’s been a really valuable lesson. These days, I still don’t look favorably on people who claim to be of an indigenous culture that they aren’t really affiliated with at all as a way to get money and power. However, I’m less critical of people who may be more on the New Agey end, just because they’re, well, New Agey. I’m learning more and more that what really matters, as far as I can see, is what the person is actually accomplishing with their works.
The way I see it, it’s getting tougher and tougher for people to deny that as a species–hell, as a world–we’re in deep trouble and sinking fast. Even if you don’t believe in global warming, it’s hard to pretend that there aren’t numerous species being negatively affected by our actions. Every day in the news it seems I see articles and reports about some chemical being linked to cancer, or another species on (or over) the edge of extinction, or another wild place devastated by pollution.
And that’s just the environmental end of things. That doesn’t even get into issues that often tie into the environment–famine and wars caused by short resources; crime perpetrated by desperate people raised and living in unhealthy environments, or with serious psychological issues that go untreated due to a lack of health insurance or social support; increasingly poor public education and more expensive higher education, as well as education that continues to promote the division between humanity and the rest of Nature.
I am less inclined to judge someone just because they live in suburbia and call themselves a shaman. In a situation where we can use all the help we can get, healers of all sorts, people who act as intermediaries between the spirit world and this one in part to help find solutions to our problems (as well as placate those we’ve royally pissed off), and those who teach a healthier way of living are all welcome as far as I’m concerned. Sure, there are probably some folks who are more motivated by their egos than anything resembling altruism. But what criteria can Some Random Person On the Internet really use to judge someone they’ve never met in their lives, and whom they’re mainly assessing via personal or professional web site? Just because someone charges for services doesn’t mean they’re in it for the money. Is my mechanic who charges fifty bucks an hour in labor costs in order to pay for rent and other costs an egotist just because s/he doesn’t give it to me free out of the goodness of hir own heart?
Can we really afford time wasted bitching about who’s not doing things in a perfectly acceptable way? One, unless someone is making a claim about themselves that is verifiably false (such as tribal affiliation or Wiccan lineage or some other such thing), in the end it’s really none of my business. Two, even if I think someone’s methods are on the fluffy side, if they’re actually DOING something constructive, then that gets them points in their favor. I’ll be honest; my tolerance for what other people do went way up once I started spending less time fussing around on the internet, and more time actually doing what needs to be done. And as the signal-to-noise ratio continues to get skewed on the ‘net, I’m going to continue putting more weight towards those who are making constructive things happen, even if I don’t happen to agree with them entirely. We may not be in as dire straits as the creator of the Gaia hypothesis recently opined, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to be rolling our sleeves up to get the work done.
Tonight I made it back upstairs, after spending the past couple of weeks doing some serious cleaning up there. It was time for me to make a song for Small Wolf, my wolf skin. Apparently my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to create a song for every skin spirit I have for dancing (which at this point is over fifteen) and their corresponding totems. So I definitely have my work cut out for me! This will take a while, but nobody seems to be rushing me. The fact that I’ve been more consistent than in the past had contented them for the time being.
Part of the reason I’m being a bit flippant in this post is because Small Wolf was formal in a way I’d never seen him before. I’m used to him being eager to dance and happy to see me, but this was a side of him I’d not experienced. He wasn’t angry, but he was definitely in Serious Teacher Mode (TM). I sat down with him, and he instructed me to fold him up in a very particular way. Then he had me create words, then a melody, and then an accompanying drum beat.
This was tougher than last time, since with Wolf (the totem) I had already created the lyrics and song a while back, and the drum beat was easy to match with it. Small Wolf had me sing the song over and over and over again, having me memorize the words as perfectly as possible before tossing in the added attention-grabber of the drum. Of course, when I began drumming the song sort of fell apart–I sang the wrong words, switched lines, occasionally sang complete gibberish. However, Small Wolf kept me going, and wouldn’t let me quit until I’d smoothed things out for the most part. He said that I’d have to be flawless with the song and drumming before he’d let me dance with him and the song at the same time.
I wrote down the lyrics and an approximation of the drumbeat. I’ll go back tomorrow night and practice more. However, I am seriously considering recording all these songs for my own benefit; I have a bit of a memory lapse because of long-term sleep deprivation, and while I’ve recovered somewhat, my memory isn’t what it used to be. This will be a good exercise in rebuilding it, but just as a backup, I may take a cassette recorder upstairs–or maybe even my laptop–and record the songs. Over time they’ll lodge themselves more firmly in my long-term memory, but better safe than sorry.
Small Wolf also explained to me a bit more about formal ritual structure according to what the spirits I work with would like me to do. I do feel a lot more confident in myself, and I feel like I’m making some progress. A lot of it is because I’m gaining a better balance among the various parts of my life, and I’m able to give my shamanic practice more attention. However, it’s also because I’m not feeling pressured to do more, more, MORE. I was actually talking to Wolf the other night about when the next time I’d head upstairs would be, and s/he asked me whether my shamanism was a priority. I told hir yes–but I also told hir that so was work, and my social life, and creative endeavors. And s/he said, “Good.” I think that really went a long way in helping me realize that I’m doing just fine, and that I don’t need to push myself to superhuman levels of achievement.
Incidentally, I managed to track down a copy of Weather Shamanism by Nan Moss and David Corbin while at Powell’s Books today. I’ve had my eye on it ever since I first heard about it last year. It was only appropriate, then, that Portland was visited by the first decent thunderstorm I’ve seen in a while. I grew up in the Midwest, where thunderstorms are a major occurrence in Spring, but they’re a lot less frequent here (we mostly just get rain, and lots of it). As I was drumming tonight, the thunder suddenly became more frequent and loud, which startled me. While I’m more comfortable with storms than I was as a kid, they still scare me a bit. Small Wolf told me to keep drumming, and that the spirits in the Storm just wanted to drum along with me as they passed by! So I kept drumming and singing, with the accompaniment of the Storm spirits as they traveled through my neighborhood.
I’m glad I’m opening up to spirits besides the animals. It’s nice to be able to take the things I’ve learned with them and use those concepts to branch out more. It gives me a greater sense of connection, and also gives me a fuller picture of what the Land needs from me.
So. Back to drumming and singing and all that good stuff.
This past Saturday Taylor and I went with our friends innowen and Kender to Mt. Hood, where they showed us a couple of trails we hadn’t yet been introduced to. While one was still remarkably covered in about 5-6 feet of snow(!), the other was mostly clear, at least up the first half mile or so. If people and places can have relationships, then I think I seriously have a crush on Mt. Hood. There was some reciprocal interest, though that mountain strikes me as rather aloof at first encounter. S/he’d like me to get to know hir better, physically (rough terrain, more remote) and spiritually, before I try anything even remotely shamanic there. Which is fine by me; while I won’t go out there as often since it’s a decent drive out, an hour and change, I do want to spend more time getting to know Mt. Hood, who may end up being a good place to go when I want to get away from people and into more secluded areas.
The trip to Mt. Hood got me craving a solo hike, something that I’d been feeling a subtle pull towards for the past few weeks, ever since Taylor and I went out to the Multnomah/Wahkeena trails for the first time since last November. Now that’s a place that I have formed a good relationship with; we’ve adopted each other, as it were. Today was a great day for a visit–perfect weather, and though there were more people than I would have expected on a week day, once I hiked past Multnomah Falls themselves, it was pretty quiet traffic-wise. I saw all sorts of critters–ravens, shiny black millipedes with yellow spots down the sides, tons of butterflies, robins, and a hummingbird, among others. The plants are going crazy, too–it’s green as can be, and everything’s rebounding from winter just fine, other than a patch of conifers that seem to have been hit by some sort of disease.
I spent a good deal of the hike in an ongoing, mostly nonverbal conversation with the Land there at Multnomah/Wahkeena. While they feel like two separate places–I can tell a decided shift in energy on the trail connecting the two–they’re very close, so I usually just refer to them as one. I also spoke a good bit with the Water as s/he sang and danced down the mountainside; s/he gave me a blessing, telling me to cool myself off by splashing myself with cold icemelt on this warm day.
At first, I found myself getting cranky with the tourists there, especially since I’d been expecting fewer people. However, I remember the lessons I learned the last time I was there, with Taylor and worked on accepting that everyone else had as much right as I did to be there, and that they weren’t automatically going to go uprooting plants and stomping on bugs.
Then three things happened, all within the space of a mile:
–A group of four people, a few years younger than I, were coming down the trail above me on a set of switchbacks. One of them threw a rock down the mountainside and nearly hit me by accident, because they hadn’t seen me. They apologized when we met. Instead of getting angry, I just told them “Yeah, it’s a really bad idea to throw rocks here, because it’s really hard to see people on the trail”. They seemed to have learned their lesson pretty well, so I went on in good spirits, trusting that they wouldn’t do anything else foolish.
–Another guy, about the same age, had been following me for a ways. I let him pass me, and was a bit annoyed by him, particularly his shirt which said “Don’t like my attitude? Then stop talking to me”. (I tend to think that the trend in “cute and fashionable rudeness”, typified by such things as Happy Bunny and the aforementioned t-shirt is not something we really need to be encouraging in this culture. But maybe I’m just an old fogie or something–most of the people I see sporting such things are in their teens to early twenties, and I’m *gasp* pushing thirty…but I digress.) Not too much later, he came back down the trail as I was heading further on, and very politely asked me if I’d seen the party he’d been separated from. I told him everyone I’d seen matching their description had been going the way he was going, and asked him if he had their cell phone numbers. He didn’t, so I told him his best plan of action would be to head all the way back down to the parking lot and wait at the car. He thanked me, and also incidentally apologized for mistaking me for male, as I was wearing relatively gender-neutral clothing with my hair pulled back and my hat on, and I am not the most curvy XX-chromosome person in the world. I assured him that it was in no way an insult, and continued on my merry way.
–Maybe five minutes later, I rounded a bend and greeted a couple of middle-aged folks who were enjoying the day. They stopped me and asked if I had any food. Just their luck, I happened to have a couple of extra granola bars I wasn’t going to need. I tried to just give them to them, but they insisted on paying me, and the man pressed five ones into my hand despite my protestations. Normally I’d think $2.50 was pretty damned steep for a granola bar, but having been in a similar, very hungry situation, in their place I’d have been that grateful, too! I checked to make sure they knew where they were going, and that they had enough water, and we parted ways with a smile.
I didn’t really think about the first incident in any meaningful way. However, when the second one happened, I started to make the connection between my lessons of tolerance from that Land, and what had been happening. The third incident was just the clue-by-four whapping me in the head. so I asked the Land what was up. S/he told me that s/he wanted me to help her help the people. We’d already established that s/he didn’t mind people being there, and made it hir task to educate them as much as possible about the need to preserve wild places like hir. S/he told me that I wasn’t particularly special, and that she talked to everybody there–I just happened to be one of the folks who noticed it on a conscious level. However, as our relationship has deepened, there’s been a greater need for me to make more of a commitment to hir, and s/he finally was able to get through to me what s/he needs me to do.
Today was an object lesson in some of the basics of what I can do for Multnomah/Wahkeena–pick up trash along the trail as usual, bring along some extra food and water, give people directions, offer a cell phone in case of need, bring a first aid kit, etc. In addition, I think I’m going to go ahead and go through first aid and CPR training as I’ve been meaning to for a while. And I picked up some volunteering information for the Multnomah Falls trail system in general; they need some help with general maintenance as well as information, so I may add that into my volunteering (along with my unofficial guide/guardian/etc. work that has been initiated today).
To finish up my hike, I went down the western part of loop around Wahkeena, my favorite part of that trail. And I got a few more affirmations that I was on the right path, figuratively and literally! First, at the crossroads where the connecting trail meets the Wahkeena loop, where I always sit and take a break, the Animal Father poked me and told me that next time I came alone, he wanted me to hike up to the place further up the mountain where I’d met him back last fall and where I’d heard him speaking through the owl’s hoot last time I visited with Taylor, and that he wanted me to bring my drum.
Then the very next people I met as I came down the mountain had a very friendly German shepherd, my favorite kind of dog, who came right up and said “Hi!” with a big slurp across my face (I don’t mind dog “kisses” at all–cleaner mouths than people, and I can always go and wash my face afterwards). After that I gave a few more people directions, and also showed another couple of folks where a Stellar’s Jay was hopping through the tree branches.
So overall it was a really inspiring day. I feel like I’ve made a major step forward in my shamanic path, since one thing I’ve known I’ve needed to do is care for the Land and maintain a good relationship with hir. I feel like I’ve been given a certain amount of responsibility that I’ve never been given before by the spirits, and I want to honor and respect that. I know there’s room for me to be, well, me, with all my mistakes and so forth, but I’m very much honored by what happened today.
I had this wonderful idea that when I start telecommuting that I’d all of a sudden have lots of free time, and could do shamanic work to my heart’s content. Unfortunately, I’m all too good at sabotaging my own efforts. As a recovering workaholic, I’m very good at finding ways to fill up my time, and even though I’m not even working full time hours yet at my freelancing gig, I still find that I don’t really have enough time to do everything I want.
This has been a good challenge for me, though. Already I’ve managed to cut down a lot on my internet time; I’ve been staying almost entirely off of Livejournal for almost a week now, just to see how it frees up my time. And I’m trying to get better about managing free time, and not getting stressed when I find that it’s time to go to bed and there are still so many things left to do.
Historically, my spiritual life has been one of the first things to suffer when I’m overloaded. When I have physical deadlines to meet, and physical people yammering at me to get such and such done, and other physical projects to be completed, nonphysical concerns get put on the back burner. It’s not that I don’t want to be tending to spiritual matters, but my priorities have often been canted towards the material plane.
I think on some level I keep waiting for the spiritual smackdown that so many seemingly more serious practitioners speak of. It’s the idea that you can’t ignore your spiritual functions, and if you do, horrible things will happen to you. I don’t doubt that horrible things may indeed happen. However, I haven’t had things happen that I’d call horrible; I haven’t had all “my” spirits abandon me, or get in the way of things that are getting in the way of my spiritual life.
What I have had is pretty consistent pressure, both from within and without. It’s harder and harder to ignore the spirits, though on my end I’m also trying harder to stay “tuned in”. This means that I’ve slowly been increasing my reliability in my forays upstairs, as well as other things that need to be done.
Tonight I went upstairs, even though I was tired, just to touch base. I spoke with Small Wolf (the skin spirit–I am going to use these naming conventions to differentiate between totems and skin spirits of the same species). He noticed I was feeling frustrated about not doing more, not being up there dancing every night and working magic and making more connections–basically not taking advantage of every free moment I have. And you know what he told me? The same thing he’s told me several times since I started working with him more regularly: “You’re here, right now. That’s all that matters.”
And he’s right. I know that by some standards, my schedule is sloppy. I have never been able to handle a daily schedule, beyond saying prayers every night–and even then occasionally I fall asleep before I remember to say them. Despite the fact that I’ve managed to do a lot on my spiritual path, creating my own magical systems, I still sometimes feel a twinge of shame that I haven’t yet defeated my lack of a scheduled practice. It’s not that what I’ve done hasn’t been fruitful; however, I’m well aware of how much better my practice could be if I put something into it every day. It’s not about what I try–yoga stretching, various meditations, nature walks–but about my own tendencies and habits.
But I am making progress. The very fact that I am still committed to this path almost eight months after I started it says a lot for me. I’ve walked other paths for longer, but this is the most intense one I’ve had. I can look at my path since accepting the call to shamanism, though, and see that I have become better, relatively speaking. Despite my too-full life, I have managed to work with Small Wolf three to four times a week for the past couple of weeks, which is more than before. And I’m still focused on continuing this path, even though I sometimes get flustered because I see so many potential things I could be working on with it, so many tasks I could be taking on.
A lot of what I’ve been doing has been my usual manner of doing things–not on a schedule, but merely taking opportunities as they come up. Things like connecting to the Land when I go outside (or when I travel), and talking to the spirits of the plants in my garden, or remembering not to buy chemical-laden products because the Land protests at the potential effect, or my recent experiences with Water and Squirrel. However, I still make it upstairs some nights each week, and I haven’t forgotten. And each time, Small Wolf is right–each time I go up there is one more time than before. It all counts.
First off, a quick note of potential interest to some readers/friends of readers/etc. I don’t talk a whole lot about the writing end of my life here, since it’s primarily a spiritually focused blog. However, I’ve put out a call for writers for a new anthology–”Engaging with the Spirit World: Shamanism, Totemism and Other Animistic Practices”. The deadline is 1 August, 2008, which gives me plenty of time to finish up a couple of other projects. Click the link for more details.
Recently I’ve been doing some work with my wolfskin, amid reorganizing and decluttering my ritual/artwork space (it’s kind of hard for me to separate the two, and not just because of apartment living!). It’s the beginning of my more regular work with the skin spirits, and though I haven’t quite managed the every-single-night goal I have, I have managed to stay mostly on track. It’s been a good experience so far. As always, Wolf the totem has been a patient teacher, and the wolf skin spirit* has been similarly so. The focus has primarily been on teaching and learning–teaching things that I’m prepared for (I’ve scheduled a series of animal magic workshops at a local pagan bookstore), and learning things that still need to be learned (which is a long list indeed!).
One thing that has been suggested is that my work with the totems, at least to some degree, will be concentrated more on working with/through the skin spirits, allowing them to help me make stronger connections with the corresponding totems. It’s not a new concept to me; I’ve been doing that with the wolf skin for years. And while I can work with the totems just fine without “intermediaries”, having some help along the way does make things easier, and helps me to concentrate on tasks beyond the initial connection. I’m not sure what will happen if I need to do some in-depth work with a totem whose skin/etc. is inaccessible, either through legalities or other limitations. I may simply end up doing a substitution of some sort, faux fur or other costumery with an animal spirit invited to reside inside. But it will help me to bring together the totemic and skin spirit works I do; I don’t think it will be all the skin spirit work will be limited to, but it’s a good starting place for more complex tasks.
Speaking of spirits, someone in a locked LJ post made a great observation. S/he made the comment that if a shaman were to question the validity of another person claiming to be a shaman, s/he would do best by consulting hir own spirits about the person. This makes a good deal of sense to me. Granted, it could be abused by those wanting to meet their own aims, but then again, what doesn’t face that particular potential fate? Still, it’s a good bit of food for thought.
Finally, I recently had the opportunity to stay in a hotel in Florida with an outdoor swimming pool while on a business trip for my day job. Now, I don’t swim all that often; my parents had an aboveground pool when I was growing up that came with the house they bought, but after I moved out after college my opportunities for swimming have been few and far between. I’m not a big fan of public pools; I want to swim, not dodge screaming children and beach balls. So my chances for swimming have been quite sporadic.
When I went out to swim on my last evening at the hotel, it was quiet; there was no one else in the pool, and the moon shone overhead. I had a chance to just enjoy being in the water without distraction. It was lovely. I allowed myself some time to simply commune with Water, feeling how buoyant I was in her embrace, and giving myself some time to play with her. I bounced against the bottom of the pool, letting the water carry me higher and higher, and cushioning my landing. I lay on my back and spun in circles. I splashed air under the surface to let the bubbles rise up and tickle my skin. I played as I haven’t in a good long while.
But then I got scared. I thought about diving under the surface like I used to do a lot. I loved pretending I was flying, not swimming, seeing the water not from above, but within, a matrix to move through. But tonight I balked. At first I told myself it